Hacker Cinema
Vertigo
1958 · Film · 128 min
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.
8 positive1 mixed9 neutralfrom 18 commenters
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19 comments on Hacker News
Culture evolves. There's no accounting for taste.
Putting aside the issues with manipulated IMDB ratings, look at the volume of Marvel movies ranked equal or better than classics like "Vertigo" or "Lawrence of Arabia".
Film lovers (or perhaps snobs?) feel jaded about recent output. Pop culture dictates that superhero movies are more accessible. The coarsening of culture is a continual, evergreen observation.
The title is a bit misleading: the Interview is mostly just boomer rambling with very little talk of San Francisco. There is a brief digression about Hitchcock's Vertigo - which is a great movie and I enjoyed that section. The movie is all about nostalgia, memory and the imagination, and I suppose San Francisco is a good setting for that since there has always been a sentiment that it used to be better (1849 is universally acknowledge as being the city's prime - rampant syphilis and cholera notwithstanding). From the movie: https://youtu.be/udMms5FKyok?si=ruLJNWTDDgFQeH1W&t=47 Or this slightly punchier clip: https://clip.cafe/vertigo-1958/you-mean-gay-old-bohemian-days-of-gay-old-san-francisco/
I used to enjoy visiting the Japanese section, probably shrunken due to high rents since then. It was like a foreign tour without the tour. I of course loved the Japanese hardware store.
If you visit Union Square, look poor.
And if you're a movie buff, visit some of the movie scenes of Vertigo, its takeoff, High Anxiety and many others. I offered my daughter a movie scene tour of the city.
Steeple scenes were filmed in Mission San Juan Bautista, south of the south bay.
Golden Gate Park is very nice. Japanese Garden (bring a camera or nice phone ) and Conservatory, Bison, Academy of Sciences, windmills,de Young museum, a flycasting pond, and more.
https://sfrecpark.org/1116/Golden-Gate-Park-Points-of-Interest
You missed the monster surf at Mavericks.
Apparently it was made using a gun director. Wow.
https://rhizome.org/editorial/2013/may/9/did-vertigo-introduce-computer-graphics-cinema/
Alfred Hitchcock famously first used it in his movie Vertigo, after one of his camera operators, Irmin Roberts, came up with the effect.
Because his argument is not good. The structure is “If there is no X, then there is no Y. Because Y, X.” This is circular reasoning which is more obvious if we use the same structure as
“If carbon exists, then carbon-based alien life forms exist. Because carbon-based aliens exist, carbon exists.”
Logically, not wrong, but you missed the most interesting part of the proof: aliens exist?! PG missed proving the most interesting part of his post: that good taste exists. I don’t think reductio ad absurdum really works here because there are millions of possible explanations for the “effects” of good taste. In his example, the fact that people have non-random responses to art.
The problem here is just the fact that people have consistent responses to art does not suppose that there exists some inherent reasoning called “taste.” In fact, many popular things are abhorred as poor taste. I think we can agree that liking Citizen Kane more than Twilight would be called “good taste.” The problem here of course is that “taste” is a sociological construct - not a logical or philosophical one - designed by humans to distinguish class upon non-obvious signifiers. Perhaps you could dress a lower class person in fancy dress and perfume, but any upper class person could snuff them out in a moment by any hundreds of small little signifiers.
PG seems to want to talk about taste without having to say any of the unfashionable things about it, not naming any specific art works or signifiers of taste. He wants to “prove” taste exists without ever even defining it. Without a single example in this framework that lends credence to his ideas. By his logic, Marvel movies and Twilight should be more tasteful than Vertigo because more people more consistently like it. In reality, taste works the opposite way, but it’s not that simple either. Most people would hate Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, but that does not mean that liking it means you have good taste. Rather the opposite in fact. The truth here, of course, is that “taste” is a cultural, social, and economic property and lens, not a logical one. You have to get into real world to argue about taste, which PG seems entirely uninterested in doing.
If I may be a bit tongue in cheek, I would advise Paul that if you want to start talking about taste, you must first talk about scarcity and then irony.
For a medium that is dependent on technology I’d say it’s impressive for any old movie to stand the test of time. I love old movies and I’m always impressed with their resourcefulness and heart. My favourite film is Seven Samurai but I sincerely hope that we can continue to make movies which challenge the preeminence of all time classics like Citizen Kane, Tokyo Story, The Rules of the Game, 8 1/2 .. like really take your pick of the top films on that list and you or anyone would do well to watch them many times over.
Anyone who doubts citizen Kane really needs to check out what kind of films were being made before it. CK was bold and experimental, an astounding picture. It’s still fresh in many ways and moving, dated too for sure but a definite classic. Orson Welles is legitimately one of my artistic heroes and he got screwed by the powers that be at the time. I kind of hate to see his work presented this way when he himself loved many of the film makers with movies on the sight and sound list.
Honestly I’m very take it or leave it with Hitchcock’s Vertigo which is the current #1 and it will probably maintain the stop spot on the critic list during the next polls. I also don’t get Sunset which always places super high. It’s good and the running in the field scene is a thrill but that’s the thing about these lists anyways, they are just a statistical average of what everyone thinks but we all have our personal dark horse favourites. One day, Battle Royale will get the credit it deserves.
I’ve been drinking if this seems disjointed.
Sight and Sound put out two excellent lists every ten years. 100 best films of all time as voted by filmmakers and another list voted on by published critics. I prefer the filmmaker list overall but it’s interesting to see how the darlings wax and wane over the years. Citizen Kane dominated for decades but now it’s Vertigo.
https://www2.bfi.org.uk/greatest-films-all-time
The first film with computer generated imagery would be 1958's Vertigo, and the computer in question an M5 gun director mechanical computer.
Awesome.
My only and excellent experience of the Castro theatre is watching Hitchcock's Vertigo there, just days after my brother-in-law had given me the tour of city, of which I was a visitor. Suddenly you realize how central to the movie the city is. There's what's now a good joke about the Mission, too.
>No Psycho by Hitchcock but 3 other movies by him?
Not like my opinion matters (nor does Mr. Lee's, in the grand scheme of things), but Psycho probably isn't in my top 3 Hitchcock films, either.
Vertigo, The Birds, Rear Window for me. Consider Notorious, North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder...there are quite a few permutations, taste dependent.
Soviet cinema had lots of masterpieces without "fair allocation of capital" (and lots of corruption one would presume).
And I wouldn't call the Hollywood situation of giving multi-million dollar budgets to BS like Transformers and spare change to far better movies a "fair allocation" either when it comes to artistic merit.
When it comes to art, allocation of capital and "efficient markets" just means more popular works get more money -- it doesn't say anything about their quality, which is part of what the article is about.
(Expecting accusations of 'elitism', I'm not talking about esoteric, self-congratulatory arthouse films either. The Godfellas for example, a mighty good movie, is anything but that, or Pulp Fiction (or, at their era, The Searchers, Vertigo etc.).
Vertigo (1958) SFAIK was the only Hitchcock film set in San Francisco. Rear Window was set in Greenwich Village, though it was reportedly inspired by a stay by Hitchcock in a Jackson Heights garden apartment.
Avatar and TDK historic points in film. AKA Dancing with Smurfs, and The Movie With More Plot Holes Than The Titanic. Hum, I beg to disagree.
Overall, I got a good laugh from the list. Seriously, this list should be called "things white US kids (of my age, granted) like". Rather than a history of cinema, it belongs more in the "comedy generated by computer" genre. Exhibit one: City Lights isn't there. Exhibit two: Modern Times isn't there. No Le Voyage dans la Lune, no Man With Camera, no Great Train Robbery, Rashomon isn't cool enough to make the list, Vertigo is too weird, and Battleship Potemkin is, like, too commie, you know. The final straws would be Independence Day and It's a Wonderful Life making the list.
I mean, On the Waterfront looks like it's very good (I haven't seen it), but, but, it was released in the same year than motherfucking Seven Samurai!
I like that you ask for mindfck movies. They definitely hold a special place in my heart. A lot of the entries here have been very sci-fi. I tend to like more historical or present-day dramas with great acting that expose some sort of undesirable human behavior, but I snuck a sci-fi movie on the list ;). You can't take the nerd out of the cinephile!
There Will Be Blood - No "great movie" list is complete without a movie that stars Daniel Day Lewis. Go watch all his movies if you want to see what it's like to take acting to the extreme.
(M) The Spanish Prisoner - Probably my favorite suspense movie, along with a Hitchcock or two like Vertigo or Rear Window. This is one of David Mamet's best, in my opinion. All these random things happen in the beginning of the movie that make you question why they bothered mentioning them, and then the catalytic action ties it all together expertly.
Pirates of Silicon Valley - This is the lightest contribution on the list, but probably the most relevant to HN. For what it's worth, both Woz and Bill Gates have described their portrayals as fairly accurate.
Alien - Definitely plays out more like a space horror film than an action movie like the sequels, the acting and suspense is fantastic, not to mention the costume work that went into the alien on the part of HR Giger (if you want a true mindfck, skip the movies and go read his website--terrifying).
Grave of the Fireflies - I wanted to include an animated film on my list, but I really had trouble deciding between Interstella 5555 (Daft Punk's Discovery set to an anime with no talking whatsoever. Great concept) and a Pixar movie (personal favorite: Up). I went with this because I figured you've probably seen Pixar movies. Grave of the Fireflies is a super depressing Ghibli film about the aftermath of the Kobe fire bombings in WW2. The way the movie shows the horrible living conditions and bleak outcomes of the two main characters (the boy is in his early teens and his sister must be around 4 or 5--I can't recall). The movie manipulates your emotions more than any other film I've included on this list. I don't think I've ever had as strong an emotional reaction to a movie as when I saw this one.
Movies that capture the essence of a time and place are great for this too. Just re-watched Hitchcock's Vertigo last night and wished I could have stepped back into the San Francisco of fifty years ago...
<b>but the films that make the most money are rarely bad. The highest grossing films of the last three years have been Avatar, The Dark Knight, and Toy Story 3</b>
Which, even if praised by whoring critics, are all quite bad , formulaic, shit.
They aren't gonna be near (random selection of quality stuff): Citizen Kane, On the Waterfront, Arsenic and Old Lace, Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Vertigo et al in any cinephiles list...
I can't really tell what it does just by glancing at it.
The name implies that you track movies somehow, don't know what that means. "About" says you recommend movies. That's not the same as tracking movies, but maybe you recommend them by tracking them. I'll try to log in and see.
Tried logging in with facebook connect, it just brought me to another login page. So I created an account. I liked the are you human thing.
I did NOT like being confronted with an upgrade to premium proposition as the very first thing I saw after logging in the first time. Presumptuous. Let me use the thing at least once, so I can find out what it does, much less do I want to pay for it.
I added one movie. When the popup disappeared, my dashboard still said I haven't added any movies yet. Disconcerting. Had to click Movie Log and come back to Dashboard before my newly added movie showed.
What's that box with the string of blue pearls at the top of the dashboard?
I clicked Recommendations, and based on one movie entered I got recommendations. I think it's fair that the recommendations appear random, since I only entered one movie, but you do mention "secret sauce" as part of your methods. Based on your recommendations I think your secret sauce is a RNG; I entered Casablanca and you recommended Forrest Gump, Vertigo and Watchmen, among others.
That sideways Facebook thing over on the right is irritating, it covers up your Secret Sauce speech and I have to scroll the page around to move it away from the FB tab.
Signed out.
Clicked Sign In Using Facebook at the very top of the front page, and got ... a giant pixelated blowup of the Despicable Me picture that you feature on the front page, at this url:
http://test.themovietracker.com/iphone#home
None of the links do anything useful (because I'm not an iphone?).
Clicked Sign Out and I get a blank page and no page ever loads.
Back button to front page.
Clicked Sign In top right, and just for fun clicked the fconnect button in the popup. Same result as above, some kind of iphone-centric page.
Filled in my email and password, clicked Go Inside and got a blank page at this url:
http://test.themovietracker.com/process_ajax_login
Clicked on Create a New Account, and instead of creating a new account I filled in my email/passwd. Clicked Go Inside and was informed of bad login credentials. Tried again, and got the iphone page.
Went back to the create account page and tried logging in again. iphone. So I can't get in anymore.
Some films by Alain Resnais deserve to be on this list:
Je t'aime, je t'aime: a time machine experiment gone wrong. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063152/
Providence: a story told while it's being written. Sometimes the writer changes his mind, sometimes his imagination takes him where he doesn't want to go. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076574/
Smoking / No Smoking: two films that explore different possible 'forks' of the same story. The first fork is the decision by one character to smoke a cigarette. In the first film she does, in the second she doesn't. There are three or four forks in each film which all completely change the fate of the characters. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108167/
Other films that come to mind:
Code Unknown: Incomplete Tales of Several Journeys , by Michael Haneke. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216625/
Akira has an ending just about as powerful as the ending of 2001. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094625/
Beyond a reasonable doubt (Fritz Lang) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049006/
(but why am I writing this on hacker news?) Vertigo (Hitchcock) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/